The Clewer Initiative - A Project to Combat Modern Slavery A Report for the Santa Marta Group

1. Since the last international Santa Marta Group meeting The Clewer Initiative, the Church of England’s campaign to combat modern slavery, has been set up and operationalised. The Clewer Initiative is working intentionally with 10 Church of England dioceses to build the Church’s long-term capacity to detect instances of modern slavery in the community and provide care to the survivors. It is also working more broadly across the Church raising awareness of the challenges of modern slavery and the role that Church can play in developing a community response.

A brief history 2. The Clewer Initiative is a 3-year fixed-term project (November 2016 – July 2019) funded by the Community of St John the Baptist. The initiative grew out of the collaborative work undertaken over the last past 3 years between the Lord of Derby and the Church of England’s Archbishops’ Council because of the Modern- Slavery Act (2015). 3. The Clewer Initiative takes its name from its donor, the Community of St John the Baptist, an Anglican order of Augustinian nuns, also known as the Sisters of Mercy, the Cuddesdon Sisters, or formerly the Clewer Sisters. This religious order was founded in 1852 to help marginalised, mainly young women, who found themselves homeless and drawn into the sex trade, by providing them shelter and teaching them a trade. The Community, now based at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, are eager to see this work continue by helping the Church respond to the challenges of modern slavery.

Strategic purpose 4. The Clewer Initiative’s vision is a world free from slavery and where those released from slavery are restored to full human dignity. 5. To this end, The Clewer Initiative enables dioceses to develop strategies to detect instances of modern slavery in the community and to assist in the provision of victim support and care. This includes: • Bespoke training and mentoring; • An overview of the challenges of slavery in the diocese including a history of the Modern Slavery Partnership, details of other statutory and non-statutory agencies working in the area and modern slavery crime figures for the area; • Help in identifying existing resources in the diocese; • Development of strategic partnerships between the diocese and statutory and non- statutory agencies; • Support in engaging and mobilising key stakeholders in the diocese and in the community; • Facilitating the delivery of a strategy and operational plan for modern slavery in the diocese; • Access to a wider community of diocesan practitioners, experts and champions to enable mutual support, collaborative working and shared best practice.

6. The Clewer Initiative is based at the Church of England’s headquarters in London. It is staffed by a full time Project Officer, Caroline Virgo, and a full time Communications Officer, Caroline Barnard. It is Chaired by the Lord , the Rt Revd Alastair Redfern and managed by Dr Charles Reed.

A snapshot of work in progress Awareness raising 7. The Clewer Initiative has produced a range of resources to help raise awareness of modern slavery and equip the local church and community to get involved. This includes amongst other things: an introduction to modern slavery; indicators of modern slavery; posters and leaflets for use in churches; a theology of modern slavery, prayer material and sermon ideas.

8. The Clewer Initiative produced in September 2017 a short film documenting how the victims of modern slavery are present even in our own churches. A YouTube film was produced in November with Caritas Westminster, Capital Mass, and Housing Justice, to alert volunteers in Winter Night Shelter projects to the possibility of modern slavery amongst the Shelter’s guests.

9. All resources are available via The Clewer Initiative’s website: https://www.theclewerinitiative.org/

Training 10. The Clewer Initiative has partnered with the UK Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority to provide a series of training events in 2017 to help churches both detect and report instances of slavery in their community. These efforts have contributed to a ‘Train the Trainers’ package which will be rolled out in 2018.

11. The Clewer Initiative is working with various chaplaincy networks to help chaplains identify and respond to forced labour exploitation in their locations. As part of this work The Clewer Initiative is supporting the development of chaplaincy at Hinkley Point - one of the largest constructions projects in Europe.

Community mobilisation 12. Work was completed in December 2017 on Hidden Voices - an asset-based community mobilisation package designed to help churches look at how they can identify and mobilise existing resources to respond to the challenge of modern slavery in their community. A 48hr residential training course is scheduled for Easter 2018 to assist with the rollout of this resource later in the year.

Diocesan capacity building 13. The Clewer Initiative is working intentionally with 10 dioceses to help them develop strategies to detect instances of modern slavery in the community and to assist in the provision of victim support and care. This involves working with the Diocesan Bishop, his or her senior leadership team and the appointed Project Lead.

A community of practitioners 14. In May 2016 following a diocesan capacity building event at Lambeth Palace, The Clewer Initiative launched The Clewer Initiative Network comprising practitioners committed to sharing models of best practice and providing evidence based data to resource the Church’s national engagement with statutory and non-statutory bodies. So far 40 of the 44 dioceses are networked in. A monthly electronic newsletter helps to keep members abreast of developments across the network, a weekly blog provides a round-up of topical stories of slavery in the news, and a twitter feed gives live updates on new stories and resources.

Victim care and support 15. Considerable thought and attention has been given over to the question of how the Church might provide support to the victims of slavery. The Clewer Initiative is working with The Medaille Trust to explore whether dioceses have suitable property available to support victims of modern slavery post NRM.

Intelligence gathering 16. Work is underway to launch in June 2018 The Clewer Initiative’s first WeSeeYou campaign - mobilising the Church’s grass roots networks to document the extent of forced labour exploitation in Britain’s hand car wash sector and to report instances of abuse to relevant statutory agencies. This initiative will complement the Church’s ongoing corporate engagement with major retail outlets as to how they audit their business/values supply chain.

Building international partnerships 17. Although the primary focus of The Clewer Initiative is the UK, the Church of England’s geographic reach includes the Diocese in Europe which is geographically by far the largest diocese of the Church of England; comprising almost 300 congregations in over 40 countries across Europe plus Turkey, Morocco and Russia. The Clewer Initiative is working with the Diocese in Europe and voluntary and ecumenical agencies to create a more coordinated approach in countering human trafficking.

18. More broadly The Clewer Initiative is working with the Anglican Alliance for Relief, Development and Advocacy and the Global Sustainability Network to deliver Goal 8.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As part of these efforts The Clewer Initiative helped organise with the Ecumenical Patriarch, a major ecumenical conference, Modern Day Slavery: The Sins Before Our Eyes, in Constantinople in February 2017.

Measuring impact 19. The Clewer Initiative is committed to measuring the impact of its work and sharing that work with a wider community of practitioners. To this end, it is working with the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab to evaluate the work undertaken in 7 dioceses. This evaluation has been designed to enhance the project methodology in each participating diocese.

20. The Clewer Initiative is also a founder member of the Joint Learning Initiative on Modern Day Slavery - a horizontal learning community and global resource that links academics, policy makers and practitioners working on issues of faith, faith leaders and religious communities to combat modern slavery.